Roundtable: Change, Or Else

Lawmakers must come together and enact meaningful health reform measures, or group health coverage could cost more than $28,000 per employee by 2019.

Analysts at Hewitt Associates L.L.C., Lincolnshire, Ill., issue that warning in a report commissioned by the Business Roundtable, Washington, a group that represents large U.S. employers.

Group health plan sponsors already spend more than $10,000 per employee on health coverage, the group says.

If current spending increases continue, “these runaway costs, combined with a $56 billion cost shift to payors from uncompensated care, would cripple the employer-based system that currently provides coverage for the majority of Americans and their families,” the Business Roundtable says in a comment on the report.

In addition, if members of Congress and other stakeholders fail to act, health care spending will eat up 20% of the U.S. gross domestic product in 2019, up from about 15% today, the Business Roundtable warns.